Seeing As Your Shoes Are Soon to be on Fire by Liza Monroy

Author:Liza Monroy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781619028586
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2016-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

DEUX

Here it is. The “how we met” story. I love it so much, I wish I could say I invented it.

My friend New Age Kassi and I are attending a big literary conference in Chicago. I’ve loved New Age Kassi since the first day we turned up in the same class in grad school, since I first heard her joke that “you could serve bread” on her earrings. It was true. She’s from Kentucky and has lost all but a slight touch of twang. Blond with a black streak in her hair, beautiful, spiritual, and with a striking intelligence, New Age Kassi is the most stylish and wittiest in every room she walks into while also being your spiritual counselor and Buddhist-Episcopalian priestess. The epitome of the wise-friend type, the first person you think of when you need advice. Getting to spend three days straight with her is one of the reasons I’m excited about being at the conference.

Early the first morning, we’re in queue at the hotel lobby Starbucks. I scan the pastry case for my usual egg-and-cheese concoction. They are sold out. Only muffins and pastries line the windowed shelf. Sugary breakfast items make me queasy. Can’t do sweetness on an empty stomach. I spot a single cheese Danish and opt for that as a compromise, because even though it’s sugary, it has the word “cheese.” I order my latte and the Danish, pay the cashier, and wait. The cashier has not yet reached into the case for it when I hear a male voice at the adjacent register: “And that Danish to go.” His more go-getting cashier opens the pastry case, angling at my Danish with her tongs.

“Excuse me, I already paid for that,” I tell my cashier. She apologizes and quickly crosses tongs with her colleague, capturing the Danish and dropping it into a small paper baglet she hands me. It happens in an instant, all before I can glimpse the rival orderer-of-Danish. Meaning, he could be anyone—a grandpa, a bike messenger, a fat tourist, a skinny tourist. As I turn, I blurt, “But you can have half.” I don’t know who said it. I mean, it was me, but it wasn’t a forethought. The words just jumped out of my mouth.

Then I’m facing him, and the whole world around me has stopped. That moment in a movie when everything darkens and freezes and there’s a spotlight on us—in that instant, he and I are alone in that hotel lobby Starbucks.

He is not a grandpa, a bike messenger, a fat tourist, or a skinny tourist. He is, by my standards at least, an arrestingly attractive man. Academically scruffy. Wearing a conference lanyard. Brown eyes glowing with intelligence and intensity behind the frames of his very literary glasses. Here, in all his glory, stands Half-Danish.

We introduce ourselves. He’s just finished presenting on a panel. He’s an author. A semi-famous one. When I Google him later, I will discover his many stellar reviews and awards. I cut the Danish in half on the milk-and-sugar station and hand it over to him.

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